Ezekiel Valshawn Brown and Garrick Green didn't have much to say when asked about defending 5A champion Scotlandville beginning a new year after graduating four of its top six players and losing another to injury.

The Hornets have heard plenty outside analysis as to the difficulty of replacing Trelun Banks, Brian Bridgewater, Damian Jones and Jared Sam — as well as now Vincent Sanders, who tore his ACL early this fall.

Brown, Green and their active teammates are just ready to provide as many answers to those doubts with their play and leave their critics as the silent ones.

"Everybody had a graduation class, and so did we," Coach Carlos Sample said. "We have a saying that, 'It's a new year, a new team, but the same goal.' People don't wanna hear it. When they play Scotlandville, they're not concerned with who graduated and this and that. It's still everybody's Super Bowl, and we're just looking forward to the challenge.

"I think these kids wanna play with a chip on their shoulder because they kind of take that personally that people say we're not as good as we have been. Who is? It's a new year. We understand that, and we understand the type of talent we lost and the numbers we lost, along with Vincent, but these kids want to leave their own legacy. They're taking that as motivation and coming in here everyday and working their butts off."

Brown and Green were willing to admit that chip on their shoulder and its role in the team's drive for a potential fifth straight championship game and third straight title.

"(People) are surprised," Brown said quickly. "I just tell 'em we're gonna win it again. (It's gonna take) defense and just us playing our game."

Sample called reaching those goals "a work in progress" and ones the Hornets will have to take a much different path to than last year's team.

Green, a sophomore, who saw only limited action behind Bridgewater, Jones and Sam, said he's felt the pressure of following in those players' footsteps inside.

"We've got to work really hard to play well because I'm coming behind some good players," he said. "In the games, last year I was just on the bench watching, and this year I'm starting, so it's a way bigger role, but that really gets you better, playing against big people (in practice), so that helped get me ready for this year."

But the loss of the triple towers will also put a greater onus not just on Green to raise his play as the new big man on the court, but on perimeter players on both ends of the floor.

"We're really going to have to do a lot of things differently," Sample said. "We're gonna have to extend our defense and utilize our quickness on the court, get more field goal attempts, more shot attempts, and just really be an all-out type of track meet and dig in defensively with solid man-to-man all over the floor. They understand we need to make stops. We can't trade baskets with people. We don't have that type of talent. We just have to bring our hard hat every night really, and they understand that, and they're excited about it."

Brown feels the added responsibility on his own shoulders, both shooting and distributing the ball, particularly until Sanders returns.

Sample sees great potential again this year, particularly in what he considers a wide-open Class 5A, if his players can indeed rise to the challenge.

"They're in new roles, but experience is the best teacher — I always say that," he said. "They've been there before. They may not have been on the floor, but they've seen it, and now they understand what it takes to get there. Even though they haven't been on the court to experience it, they know what it takes to get there, and I think we're gonna use that to our advantage. They've been around a lot of basketball, and one thing they have on their side is they're winners. These kids, regardless, they're winners."

The coach, in his seventh year leading the program after having previously led his alma mater Istrouma, drew similarities between this year's group and the 2009-10 squad that began the program's string of championship game appearances and said, in many ways, he is enjoying this season more thus far than the early stages of its star-laden predecessors everyone expected to repeat as champions.

"People don't understand that it's difficult to coach a lot of talent," Sample said. "You have to gel attitudes and gel all of that together into one to get everybody used to playing together, and that's a difficult thing to do when people expect you to win every night, and I think last year we did a good job of keeping guys humble and making sure they understood that anything could happen on any given night.

"With that said, this year we have to scramble for everything we get. We're kind of under the radar. Expectations are high for us, but maybe not for the people outside of Scotlandville because we lost so much. That right there alone takes a little pressure off of everybody. Not saying that's an excuse if we happen to lose, because it's not, but they understand that it's gonna be hard to go 36-2 with the young group that we have here. I think just to sit back and watch this team grow as the season progresses and watch their progress, that right there is something that a coach really enjoys."